234 American Consul in Sydney to send our mail to us here via Rabaul on the New Ireland steamer. And this mail was what had already filtered through his office after the last "Mataram" sailed and before he had received our message. It was a welcome accident. It is amazing how one forgets all the familiar matters and familiar people of normal life in a detached existence of this sort. The scope of consciousness includes no more than the ebbing and flowing of the ego through the environment surround- ing it. The other worlds fade out slowly and a process of insular stagnation permeates the memory and the mind. And suddenly the mail comes. And as suddenly the other worlds tumble back roaring and rolling and knock- ing against each other with an energy redoubled in exile. It is a nervous affair. It all comes on you at once like an avalanche and you cannot help but be toppled over by it. It was seven weeks ago when we got our last mail and this installment was from three to four months old. When Hamlin returned from the mountain and had gotten into the spirit of the affair we all became im- mense little gods making jokes about the universe. Yale had beaten Harvard, so and so had married so and so (after all, well well); and there was sad news as well as fair news. When the three of us rose from dinner in the even- ing we hardly knew each other so greatly had the event